The home gardening art has long appreciated the need for adapting rotary lawn mowers to finely mulch grass cuttings in order to remove the need for raking, subsequent to the grass cutting operation. This need has been met with many different rotary mower attachments, such as those disclosed in the following patents: U.S. Pat. No. 4,318,268 to Szymanis; U.S. Pat. No. 4,083,166 to Haas; U.S. Pat. No. 4,435,949 to Heismann; U.S. Pat. No. 4,205,512 to Thorud; U.S. Pat. No. 4,189,903 to Jackson et al; U.S. Pat. No. 4,135,351 to Akgulian; U.S. Pat. No. 4,292,791 to Lalonde.
These patents describe various blade and mower housing structures which re-circulate or re-cut the grass in order to provide a finer discharge of the cut material. None, however, discloses or suggests an attachment by which articles other than those which pass underneath the mower may be fed independently into the mower for mulching. Furthermore, there is no suggestion in any of the prior patents that any adaptors or other mower modifications could be suitable for mulching sticks, twigs, leaves and other garden debris.
Adaptors for feeding materials into the top of the mower deck, such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,100,371 to P. C. Redmon for dispensing lawn seed, are known. The Redmon dispenser includes an internal rotary disk operated by a mower wheel roller to dispense fertilizer and seeds for preparing or treating lawns. However, the Redmon disclosure neither teaches nor suggests a mower attachment suitable for general garden mulching. None of the prior art teaches or suggests an adaptor for a rotary lawn mower which efficiently converts it to a mulching device for creating general garden mulch out of usual gardening debris, nor do they suggest a safe manner in which the plant debris may be safely and efficiently hand-fed into the mower assembly for mulching.